52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 25
June 17th -June 23rd, 2024
Storyteller
My family does not have any one particular ancestor that I can immediately bring to mind when writing about the prompt “storyteller.” I do, however, have one who told me the stories of a several of my ancestors when I asked her questions about my paternal lineage. She was also one of the most forthcoming and "family knowledgeable" of my recent relatives to give me a beginning into the stories of my dad’s family. But then, that was all in her true nature!
Her name was Florence Arline Allen Harper. She was leader in our family, and I was enthralled with her ability to adjust to life changing decisions such as joining the U.S. Army, as woman in the height of WWII, taking entrepreneurial risks, owning a small factory, as well as creating and running several small businesses in geographic locales far from her ancestral birthplace. She did all of that and more.
Florence Arline Allen, my paternal aunt, my father’s sister, was born in Medford, Massachusetts on 20 January 1917 during a particularly cold winter in the eastern United States. Medford was a historic New England town on the Mystic River that was situated just over six miles to the northwest of Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents Joseph Smith Allen and Ruth Naomi McGhee Allen had been living on Wellington Road in Medford when she
was born. Joseph was an assistant manager at S.S. Kresge Company, a 5 and 10 Cent variety store in Boston, and Ruth was a homemaker. Florence was their first child together. Florence also had a stepbrother who was born from Ruth’s first marriage. Both Joseph and Ruth and their immediate families originated from the central Pennsylvania towns of Williamsport, Lock Haven, Milton, and Dunnstable.
Joseph’s occupation as a store manager for S.S. Kresge Company meant that he was transferred more that a few times in Florence’s childhood and teen years, giving her the experience of in living in different geographical areas of the United States.
By 1919 Florence had a new baby sister named Ruth Elizabeth. The small family was living in the historic town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, made famous during the American Revolutionary War, on Crescent Hill, a distance of almost thirteen miles from Boston. Joseph’s occupation was recorded in the 1920 U.S. Federal Census as manager of a notions store, presumably for the S.S. Kresge Company.
By all accounts Florence lived the usual life of a child and teenager, excelling in school and sports, and sharing a home with her parents, a half-brother, and two siblings, one of which was my own father, the youngest of the Allen children. During the 1920s to the 1950s Joseph and Ruth rented the homes in which they lived due to my grandfather’s job as a store manager who was employed by a large company that often transferred their managerial staff to stores that needed strong leadership.
In the 1930 U.S. Census the family of five was residing in Sinking Spring Borough in Berks County, Pennsylvania, a small town in southeastern Pennsylvania, her father having been transferred to a S.S. Kresge Store near that location perhaps in Reading, Pennsylvania.
It seems that the Great Depression did not bring as much economic stress to the family because of my grandfather’s occupation. The Boston branch of this large chain store during the 1930s to the late 1980s was located on Washington Street at Temple Place. It maintained a lunch counter, deli, and snack bar in addition to the usual daily items and sundries that were sold there.
Sinking Spring was, and is, still a small town. The borough’s name was derived from a spring that was located in the center of town. The water in this spring would sink into the ground from time to time, giving the illusion that it had disappeared. It was first inhabited by members of the indigenous people of the Lenni Lenape Minsi or Wolf tribe. The inhabitants reportedly called the main spring “the sunken spring” (an anglicized version of the words in the Lenni Lenape indigenous language). White settlers called it the “sinking spring.” It also has large underground streams that carve out the local limestone formations and create sink holes.
Florence was a student in 1931 and 1932 at Sinking Spring High School where she excelled in academics and was a member of the Girls’ Basketball team competing in the position of guard in15 games and for 59 quarters, the highest number of games and quarters of anyone on the team in 1931.
The year1938 found Flo as a student living on Lancaster Avenue in Shillington, Pennsylvania. She seems to be the only one of her siblings to attend a four-year college. But soon change was coming to the Allen family and to the United States in the form of WWII.
Home on Narrangsett Pky, Warwick, RI
By the 1940s Florence was living in Warwick, Kent County, Rhode Island. She was 23 years old when the family lived on Narragansett Parkway on the bay. My own father has fond memories of this home and locale.
According to the U. S. Federal Census of 1940, Flo had completed 3 years of college. The home on Narragansett Parkway was a lovely New England style wood shingled home. In fact, all the homes in which the Allen family lived were lovely, no doubt a benefit of my grandfather's occupation. The homes in Shillington, Pennsylvania, Warwick, Rhode Island, Snyder, Texas, and two in northeastern Pennsylvania still stand today.
Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University) was Flo’s alma mater. She graduated from Drexel in the early 1940s with a Bachelor's degree that is in the present time the Nutrition and Dietetics degree, one that would soon become especially useful to Florence. The United States formally entered WWII on December 7,1941 when President Roosevelt told the country that a "state of war exists between the United States and Japan." In June of 1943 Florence enlisted in the U.S. Army and was stationed as a medical dietician in Newfoundland. As of 1944 she was 2nd Lt. Florence Arline Allen of the Army Medical Corps, later becoming a 1st Lieutenant. She had served during WWII!
This was where she met her husband, Eugene C. Harper, also serving in the U.S. Army as a Staff Sgt. stationed in Newfoundland. During a 21-day furlough she and Gene were married on 10 August 1944 by the pastor of St. Stephens Episcopal Church, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on the lawn of her parents’ home in Shavertown, Pennsylvania where her parents, Joseph and Ruth, were residing at the time due to my grandfather's transfer and relocation to the S.S. Kresge Store in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. A reception followed at Irem Temple County Club in Dallas, Pennsylvania, and then a honeymoon trip to the Poconos.
Here is a small bit of the interesting information that I learned about the women who served in WWII:
In May of 1942, the United States Congress instituted the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps, later upgraded to the Women’s Army Corps, which had full military status. It members, known as WACS, worked in more than 200 non-combatant jobs stateside and in every theatre of the war. Members of the WACs were the first women, other than nurses, to serve within the ranks of the United States Army. Applicants had to be U.S. citizens between the ages of 21 and 45 with no dependents, be at least five feet tall, and weigh 100 pounds or more. Over 35,000 women from all over the country applied for less than 1,000 anticipated positions. However, by 1945, there were more than 100,000 WACS and 6,000 female officers in the U.S. Army.
Along with Aunt Flo, her sister, my paternal aunt, Ruth Elizabeth Allen also served as a WAC and my father, Joseph S. Allen, Jr. served in the Army Air Force during WWII. All three were enlisted military personnel. Neither my father, her brother, nor my Aunt Ruth, her sister, were able to attend Flo and Gene’s wedding as they were serving on active duty.
Even though Flo was born in New England and lived in northeastern area of the United States up until her marriage, she and Gene embarked on their journey across the United States to Texas, to own and manage a “tourist court” or motel in Snyder, Scurry County, Texas on Highway 107.
Eugene was the manager and Florence was the assistant manager. They are recorded as such in the U.S. Federal Census of 1950 as residing in Snyder, Scurry County, Texas, a booming oil drilling town 87 miles southeast of Lubbock. Living at the same address was Eugene’s parents and at least eight “guest lodgers” all of whom were men employed by the local oil companies. They were district managers, field equipment managers, drilling
superintendents, production superintendents, chemical engineers, and geologists.
The name of the “tourist court’ or motel was Pal-O-Mar Courts. Flo and Gene were smart business people and knew when to take advantage of area business trends since in 1948 oil was discovered on the Canyon Reef formation north of town of Snyder. Within a year, the population of
Pal-O-Mar Tourist Courts, 1940s
this one time farming community jumped from around 4,000 to 12,000. The boom was over by late 1951, and the population which had peaked around 16,000 then stabilized at 11,000.
I remember Aunt Flo talking about the motel they owned in the late 1940s and through the 1950s. It was not an easy business. But their lifelong trend of owning and managing various businesses had begun. They owned and lived at the motel until at least 1955. My grandparents, Joseph and Ruth, had lived near them in Snyder, relocating from Lusk, Wyoming to Texas, until my grandfather’s death in in Synder, Texas in 1955.
Downtown Phoenix, Arizona in the 1950s
By 1957 Flo and Gene were living in Phoenix, Arizona and owned operated the Phoenix Screw Products, they lived in a new ranch home on East Oak Street in Phoenix. Aunt Flo called it the "screw factory!" Their businesses end endeavors had taken them far from Pennsylvania and New England. When I and my brothers were children in the early 1960s my parents took us on a cross-country car trip to Arizona to visit them. the trip was awesome and I thought Phoenix was the most impressive and interesting place I'd even been, so far from where I grew up!
And so, their life of relocating and becoming entrepreneurs continued on to California, again becoming an incredible place for our family visit to in 1969. In order to go there I was able, along with my family, to embark on my first airplane flight.
My uncle continued to work into the 1980s and 1990s for various concerns and my aunt was lucky enough to stay home and assist from there. They became owners of parcels in Arizona, even selling some of the land to the creator of the Muppets, Jim Henson! It was during this time that she and I often wrote letters to each other. I was a young mother and I often solicited advice from her, and she was always forthcoming with that advice.
Since I knew little about my paternal family history, I wrote to her asking what she may know about our family. She knew more than I expected and happily shared that information with me. I was finally able to begin to build my paternal family tree!
I have several letters that I have saved from her through the years that I have used as the basis for that tree. Her assistance was so valuable to me. Even today, I sometimes take out the letters and find a new fact or nugget of information that I missed on previous readings. Thanks to her, gladly, I still have several unanswered questions about the Allen lineage that will keep me happily busy and researching for quite some time. Genealogists always say that our family research and family trees are never finished. She gave me plenty of leads to follow. I only wish that I could talk to her today and let her know some of the mysteries that I have solved thanks to her assistance. I'm sure that she would have liked to hear about some of those mysterious puzzles that I solved. And, I have a few more questions to ask of her, but unfortunately that will not happen. Or maybe my “ancestor antenna” will pick up something from her soon!
In fact, as I wrote this blog post, just this week, I was looking at my new DNA connections on my Ancestry.com account and I came across a new cousin match. Without her help many years ago I would not have known where this connection fit into my tree. Thanks to Aunt Flo I was able to assess where this cousin’s match actually applied to my paternal family tree.
My “ancestor antenna” seems to be working!!
My Aunt Flo died on 9 November 1993 in Carefree, Arizona, a sad day for this family. Her memorial service was held at La Casa de Cristo Lutheran Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, the church that she and Uncle Gene attended and were so generous in their giving.
And so, the prompt of “storyteller” in this blog post is about Florence Arline Allen Harper, my paternal aunt, my benefactor, who relayed the invaluable stories and clues of my paternal ancestors enabling me the ability to pass them on to future generations. Her knowledge, entrepreneurial example, fearlessness, and generosity will continue on for many years in my family.
Oh, and I'd like to add here that the "storyteller" title for the Allen family has been passed on to me. Thank you, Aunt Flo!
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